I went to the pool today, the heat
finally convincing me it was time to try out the lap swim. Toward the
end of the hour, I noticed a group of kids gathering around the
entrance. After we boring grown-ups were done swimming back-and-forth
in straight lines, the pool would re-open at 7:00 for another two
hours of all-ages mayhem. It was 6:53. Choteau's kids were swarming
outside the fence, ready and waiting.

Something struck me as unusual about
the scene, but I couldn't put my finger on it until I was outside,
heading toward my bike. A blue minivan pulled up next to me. The
sliding door opened, and children of various ages waited to jump out,
starting with a snow-blonde four-year-old boy in jet blue trunks. "Go
on," I heard the driver's voice, female, say, when he hesitated.
He launched himself out of the vessel, followed by a posse of older
siblings, and then the van drove away -- not down the street, to find
a parking space, but away.
Home, presumably, or maybe to the grocery store.

That's what was unusual about
the assemblage of kids hovering by the door. They were just...kids.
Dozens of them, toddlers to teens, and not a parent in sight. On my
way out of the pool house, I had seen a man in his fifties and a few
older teenagers stationed behind the entrance desk. And that was it.
For this next two hours, the whole herd of pre-pubescent boys and
girls now streaming into the pool would be almost totally
unsupervised. Totally free, and totally fine. No parents required.
(Presumably some of the teens inside were lifeguards, and would soon
be sitting in the chairs designated for that purpose. I didn't stay
to find out.)

I wasn't sure which was more strange,
the fact of this freedom, or how surprising it was to me. Operating
outside the watch of my parents was not unusual in my own small-town
childhood. But that was decades ago, and my more recent experiences
with crowds of kids has always included crowds of parents, too. As
these children careened into the pool with the universal, timeless
sounds of hot kids released into cool water -- shouts and splashes
and happy screams -- something like a sense of rightness, of OK-ness,
flooded up in me. The adults were off doing whatever it is adults do,
and the kids were free to manage their own affairs here at the pool.
Not abandoned, or ignored. Just trusted. This world was safe enough
for that. It felt good.

As I walked my bicycle across the
grass, heading for the sidewalk, I had to dodge a kaleidoscope of
smaller rides, with names like Dynaback, Kazam, and Titan Flower
Princess. From the number of bikes littering the ground, it appeared
that most of the kids had arrived on their own power. After the racks
had filled up, they had simply been dropped wherever their owners had
happened to screech to a halt. No locks, of course. Like the kids
themselves, bikes are unfettered here.

~

Absence of supervision is not the same
thing as a lack of attention, though. If Choteau is anything like my
hometown, there are plenty of people familiar with who should be
where, doing what, keeping an eye out. It's the original social
safety net; sometimes oppressive, sometimes helpful.

And it's not just adults who are on the
watch for something, or someone, out of place. Just last week, for
example, I was investigated by one of Choteau's observant young
citizens. I was out for a sunset walk, an unidentified oddball, loose
on the streets, when I heard a shout.

"Hey! Who are you?"

I looked around. "Me?"

"Yeah! Who are you?"

My interrogator looked to be about
eleven. His friend, a smaller and more covert detective, concentrated
on his skateboard. "My name is Amy, " I said, smiling and
trying not to laugh. "What's yours?"

"Jonah. I haven't seen you around
before," he explained.

"I'm new."

He nodded, taking this in. "Do you
know who lives in that house?" Jonah pointed. "They're new,
too."

"Nope. I live on the other side of
town." Having rarely encountered people he didn't know, he
logically assumed that all of us new people, like migrating birds,
must be of a flock. "Well, nice to meet you," I said
lamely, and began to walk off.

"You too!" he hollered. And
then he followed up with, "I'm teaching him to skateboard!"
I looked back, feeling like he was offering me something with this
declaration, like I had passed his test. Jonah's co-conspirator shook
his head a little, grimaced.

"Cool!" I said, unable to
keep from laughing, finally, and then they both laughed too. What was
cracking us up? The weirdness of our conversation, maybe, and the
surprise of a connection in it. It was delightful. These boys didn't
see themselves as unsupervised. They saw themselves as supervising
me. This was their
playground, their neighborhood, and they were keeping their town
safe out in the semi-darkness of the summer night.

~

I'm under no illusions that
Choteau, or any place, is perfect, or that its children are perfectly
free. I imagine if you're a gay or lesbian kid, or come from a
non-Christian family, or exhibit other forms of being different here,
things could feel very constricted, or even scary. As I get to know
this place better, I'm sure I'll learn things that will disturb my
first impressions, in the way that any relationship grows more
complex over time. Knowing this, I'm trying to absorb as much as I
can with the naiveté of the
new-comer, and enjoy the short period I have to see through fresh
eyes.

From that perspective, the
freedom of the children here stands out. It's not just at the pool --
all over town, pods of kids tear around on their bikes, helmet-less
and totally engrossed in their own worlds. Small herds of pre-teens
walk and whisper and giggle. The other day a huge pick-up truck
turned onto Main Street, driven by a young man so small I could see
only his eyes and forehead over the steering wheel. He waved at me
and drove confidently on.

Observing them, it strikes
me that the numbers of unsupervised children and the types of
activities they engage in could be a way to measure the overall
wellness of a place. Any community could do it. Just as we count
birds or test the water quality as a way to determine the health of
our ecosystems, we could take note of how many kids are roaming
semi-wild among us, free to make their own play, solve their own
problems, do their own thing. I'm not sure what this study would tell
us. Something about our own adult insecurities, perhaps? The fears,
actual and imagined, that we are living with, and passing on?

I don't know. All I have is
my gut feeling that if a community is safe enough for its children to
play together, out-of-doors, without causing trouble and without much
supervision, then there is something working about that place, in
spite of its imperfections and limitations. It's a form of wealth, a
gift to the next generation, to be able to trust that most people,
most of the time, are decent, and everything will probably be alright
if we just don't worry about it too much. In Choteau, I'm happy to
see kids receiving that inheritance -- that is to say, playing.
Together. Outside. Unharmed, unencumbered, unsupervised.